276 SINGULAR DWELLINGS 



Their favorite exploit was, each to put on the 

 skin of a buffalo, horns, tail, and alJ, and thus 

 accoutred scamper about through the crowd, 

 to the real or affected terror of all the ladies 

 present, and to the great delight of the boys. 

 The Pueblo villages are generally built with 

 more regularity than those of the Mexicans, 

 and are constructed of the same materials as 

 were used by them in the most primitive ages. 

 Their dwelling-houses, it is true, are not so 

 spacious as those of the Mexicans, containing 

 very seldom more than two or three small 

 apartments upon the ground floor, witbont 

 any court-yard, but they have generally a 

 much loftier appearance, being frequently two 

 stories high and sometimes more. A very 



feature in these buildinsrs. is, that th 



is most generally no direct communication 



« 



between the street and the lower room 

 which they descend by a trap-door from the 

 upper story, the latter being accessible by 

 means of ladders. Even the entrance to the 

 upper stories is frequently at the roof This 

 style of building seems to have been adopted 

 for security against their marauding neighbors 

 of the wilder tribes, with whom they w^re 

 often at war. When the family had all been 

 housed at night, the ladder was drav/n up, 

 and the inmates were thus shut up in a kind 

 of fortress, which bid defiance to the scanty 

 implements of warfare used by the wild In- 

 dians, 



Tliough. this was their most usual style of 

 architecture, there still exists a Pueblo of Tao5, 



